Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Stagnant Air? Not on MY Planet!

You know Bushiroad is scraping the bottom of the barrel when they feel the need to unveil a new wave of Bermuda Triangle artwork to maintain viewer interest for their weekly Vanguard stream. :x

It's more or less true - with the remainder of Fighter's Collection 2016 presumed to be mostly-identical G-Guardians (which they're still a week off from properly showcasing), there isn't much left they could have shown us. But the Cray Elemental that Bushiroad held in reserve certainly has people talking!

Saturday, March 26, 2016

BSF 2016 Chicago Team League Report

Tired. Exciting day. Words.

Got the old RUTV team together for the first team event in Illinois in YEARS, and we had a really good time. We took team placements as they fell in the morning, with me in slot C playing Tsukuyomi, one team mate playing Sanctuary Guard in slot B, and the other playing Claret Sword in slot A. Much to our surprise a lot of teams were actually playing with their ace members in the third slot, so I got a lot of great games.

Round 1 - Tsuk vs. Chaos

Right off the bat I'm accosted by a match-up I know altogether too well (tanks, Soolzen), and I was fairly pumped to see how it would turn out. I open with the first turn, call two Concierge alongside my Half Moon vanguard on turn two to force the ability through and ravage his hand in the process. He targets them as one should, but I'm able to maintain one and call another card to my front row on my third turn, thus turning off the possibility of Chaos Universe stunning me to any horrifying degree. He rides Chaos Bringer, locks my only back row, strides Universe and... you know, I'm not sure if he was missing another counterblast to use it or what, but he didn't use its ability. I learn a turn later than he had a Photon at the time too and chose not to call it. Come my turn, he declares the ability of Chaos Bringer, but I inform him that I did not have two locked cards. After he does a double take and we fix the game state ourselves, I carry on as normal. Next turn he rides CBD, tosses out the locks in full force with Bringer and Photon, and I intentionally take a couple more damage. Using the combined abilities of Susanoo and Takemikazuchi I hit my stack, breaking through his two-pass with triple triggers for the game.

Sanctuary Guard partner loses to Nubatama by a very narrow margin, Memesord outpaces an unfortunate Angel Feather player. 1-0 for the team.

Round 2 - Tsuk vs. Sanctuary Guard

I'm fairly used to this as well. Went first. Weaker turn two on my end than I would have liked, being forced to throw down a column of Akagi and Kusanagi alongside my Half Moon vanguard. Ate an early crit for lack of any real way to shrug it off in the face of mighty 14K lanes, he healed somewhere, and got run over badly by his second Sanctuary Guard Regalie. Not for lack of trying, of course - things just didn't favor me this time. 9 cards away from the average sized stack.

Teammates both lost as well. Sanctuary Guard got hit by DOTE while on G2, Memesord lost to Revengers. 1-1 for the team.

Round 3 - Tsuk vs. Revengers

Went first. The perfect guards flew, both of us denying each other on-hits the entire game. I reach my stack and double crit him from 3 to 6 while his pants are down, so to speak.

Sanctuary Guard lost the mirror match when two g assists fell through, while Claret overcame Brawlers with the most overkill Phantom Blaster Diablo I've ever seen. 2-1 for the team.

Round 4 - Tsuk vs. Break Ride Reit

Went first. Well this certainly proved to be a blast from the past. Guy was making mistakes left and right, though, opting out of or just forgetting on hit skills (I reminded him of the mandatory one in Somni). I got slightly faked out by the white duo artworks that I never actually look at (mostly playing online and all...), but nothing that kept me from playing my normal game. He manages to hold out through two separate bands of stacked triggers with all his perfect guards, and it comes down to me swinging with a Full Moon vanguard for the crit to win. He might have actually been able to hold out by playing the Olyvia turn better, but I'll take it.

Sanctuary Guard beats Extreme Battlers. Claret cheeses Revengers with a double crit at 3. Salt ensues. The long and short of it is that this guy really does not like Claret and tried to justify his case by making terrible cross-clan card comparisons (what does Chromejailer have to do with... anything???). The guy's friend was very happy he lost to Claret. I feel like those two shouldn't be on the same team, but whatever. lol. 3-1 for the team.

Round 5 - Tsuk vs. Revengers

This was a local team we haven't fought in a long time, so it was good to see them. Went first. Got hammered by at least one flavor of Blaster Dark every turn until the end of the game, where I got cheesed out by Phantom Blaster Diablo. Course, if I tossed out another card so as to be super careful and avoid that, then Spectral Blaster would have gone to town and ended things all the same. This was the only game all day where I had to toss two cards to stride, one of which was an Akagi I could have otherwise used to be in a solid position. Sadness.

Sanctuary Guard ends up on the receiving end of a last minute Commander Laurel appearance backing Daikaiser Leon to reverse the card advantage situation and loses. Claret decks out by a one card margin against DOTX in a game that would have otherwise been sealed... 3-2 for the team, GG guys, we out. They earned it.

Overall we're not upset. We had a good time, all our opponents were pretty cool guys who were more than willing to explain things like we were, and we never caught wind of any nasty rule sharking cases or what have you. The event was run very well. No re-pairing, no major delays between rounds, a very outgoing staff that was more than willing to lend a hand where there was confusion...

For reference, we took off at 1:45 or so to go eat, lol. So I can't say personally what/who topped or anything. There were 7 rounds before the top cut, though.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Friday, March 18, 2016

My Little Sister Can't be This Terrible

Disclaimer: Kirino a shit

After the reveal of Verano on Tuesday's weekly stream, I had a feeling we'd be seeing the headlining Oracle Think Tank card from Fighter's Collection 2016 in short order - you know, for the sake of lining up with the fight featured in the coming episode of Vanguard G. Lo and behold, I was right on the money. She's here!

Sunday, March 13, 2016

Quick fixes from BT06

Headed to the Chicago Team League? Too cheap to buy into a case the day before the event? Haven't done any testing? Never fear, this bird is here to spill the beans on some fairly fast and painless additions you can make to your decks that will make a world of difference to their performance.

Friday, March 11, 2016